Validation of the Vanderbilt Classroom Listening Assessment Short Survey for Children With Unilateral Hearing Loss

Children with unilateral hearing loss experience difficulties in classroom listening situations. There are a limited number of validated questionnaires available for monitoring listening development and quantifying the challenges school-aged children with unilateral hearing loss experience. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a survey that describes the classroom listening challenges reported by children with unilateral hearing loss with and without the use of personal hearing devices (air conduction hearing aid, bone conduction hearing aid, cochlear implant, contralateral routing of signals system).

Children aged 9 to 17 years with self-reported unilateral hearing loss completed an online survey about classroom listening difficulties when not using a personal hearing device (n = 1148) or with the use of a personal hearing device (n = 897). The survey includes 15 questions examining different situations common in modern classrooms. Each question includes a picture depicting the described listening situation. Exploratory factor analysis was used to develop subscales and the internal reliability of the subscales was evaluated. To validate the survey, the relationships between survey scores and self-reported hearing difficulties (without a personal hearing device) or type of device (with a personal hearing device) were evaluated using regression analyses.

Factor analysis revealed survey scores for individual items statistically loaded onto three factors. On the basis of these factors, subscales were created, which are related to: (1) listening situations where the talker is faraway from the child, (2) listening situations where the talker is close to the child and they are inside a building, and (3) listening situations where the talker is close to the child and they are outside a building. Regression analyses revealed children reported the greatest difficulty in school settings when the sound of interest was faraway from them. Although scores were generally higher, indicating listening was easier, when children were wearing their personal hearing devices (i.e., air conduction hearing aid, bone conduction hearing aid, contralateral routing of signals system, cochlear implant), situations with faraway signals were still reported as more challenging than were situations where signals were close.

This set of findings highlights the need to incorporate distance effects into laboratory evaluations that include children with unilateral hearing loss. In addition, the findings support clinical interventions that address talker-to-listener distances, such as preferential seating and remote microphone systems. Last, the results of this study validate the Vanderbilt Classroom Listening Assessment Short Survey for use with children aged 9 to 17 years of age with unilateral self-reported hearing difficulty. The subscales are empirically driven, internally reliable, and focus on three types of listening situations encountered in classrooms. It is important to note that the survey results demonstrate the expected pattern of results, with participants who have greater self-reported hearing difficulty rating classroom listening situations as more difficult than participants with less self-reported hearing difficulty.